Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/30

20 they had been buried in the cave in which, during their lifetime, they had lived and consumed these animals whose remains we find.

M. Adolphe Mégret suggests that, in the position in which all the skeletons that have as yet been discovered were found to have been buried, we are "in the presence of a funeral and religious rite that was perpetuated." Here we would further draw attention to the little bone objects of various dimensions, but always of the same shape, that have each time been found with the

ornaments that are supposed to have been around the heads or necks; we refer to the pieces of bone that measure from about one inch and a half to three inches in length, cut in the center so as to form two ovals joined together; they are slightly ribbed longitudinally; these were supposed to have united the ends of the necklaces of deer's teeth or shells and thus been suspended in a prominent position; they probably were roughly cut "totems" or objects of veneration of their "religious" instinct. Even the same shaped "totems" have been found elsewhere. For further and fuller explanation of a meaning that we can not express here,